League of Ireland announce creation of new Women’s Development League

There was welcome news for CK United this week as the FAI announced the creation of a new Women’s Development League, which will see the club afforded the opportunity to create a senior team for the first time as of next season. This is a historic day for the club who missed out on a Premier Division licence ahead of this season with Waterford getting it instead. Endorsed by UEFA as part of their Women’s League Development Fund, this new league will allow the current 12 SSE Airtricity Women’s Premier Division clubs to enter an Under-23 team into a competitive league and they will be joined by 10 clubs currently participating in the EA SPORTS LOI Academy Development Programme.

Speaking exclusively to The Nationalist, CK United Chairman, Peter Harvey welcomed the news. 

“It means that we now have a women’s first team in the League of Ireland, albeit in the Development League. There will be promotion and relegation in a couple of years time so we’re on the ladder to getting a Premier Division team. This has been eight years in the making. We first had this idea back in 2017 when we first started this journey, so we’re finally seeing the fruits of our labour. There was a First Division mooted for a while and then this was brought up about a month ago so there’s been rumours about this for a while. We found out the possibility of it in the last week or two.” 

This is the result of a lot of hard work and dedication from those involved in the club.

“We’ve been pushing hard for this, we applied to join the Premier Division last year but Waterford got it. It’s a big step in our development of CK as a club, and that brings with it other stuff like sponsorship and investment. It also means that our players don’t have to go elsewhere to get first team football. Hopefully we can add to our squad and challenge for promotion in a few years. This is a result of pressure from clubs like us. You had to be competitive at U19’s level to be included in this and we have been competitive.

The new Development League is replacing the current U19’s League and whilst there is a concern that there is a big jump from U17’s to senior team, Harvey says that it shouldn’t be too much of an issue 

“We would have preferred the U19’s to stay but from the 2027 season, we’ve been told that there is going to be an U16’s league and an U18’s league. Girls that are U19 or U20 should be strong enough to play in this league anyway. There’s already a lot of girls of that age playing in the Premier Division.” 

The wheels will be getting put in motion in the next few weeks. “We’ll be having an expression of interest in the next few weeks, and anybody can apply to join us. Anybody who is at another club and left us to go to another club, we obviously won’t be approaching them until after the season finishes in November. Myself, Shane Dunphy and Fran Egan have been working quietly in the background for a while, just making sure everything is in place. We’ll be ready to go when the season starts. If we get promoted, we will have to put in an U23 team so it will continue to help our development.” 

Harvey added that if any ladies are interested in joining the CK Women’s side, they should email info@ckunited.ie and the club will get back to them with the next steps.